Leading South Island riders will head to the Southern Canterbury A&P Showgrounds at Waimate this weekend for the 2019 South Island Jumping & Show Hunter Championships. This show is rotated around the South Island areas so it’s been five years since SCNO last hosted this event. Strong entries across all four rings will see over 330 horses and ponies competing.

Show director Tim Douglass is looking forward to a full weekend of jumping. “We’re pleased with the support from throughout the South Island. Usually the showgrounds are extensively irrigated for our summer shows but we had to cancel our last show here six weeks ago due to excessive rain and even around Christmas time it was still too wet. We inspected the showgrounds last night and they’re in great condition” said Tim.

South Canterbury Saddlery has sponsored nineteen show rugs which will be presented to winners at the event. Seventeen of these will go to South Island Jumping Champions across all three rings. On Sunday in the Show Hunter Ring the two rugs for the SCNO Area High Points series will be presented, with Couplands Animal Food sponsoring the ponies and Equine Veterinary Services (Donna Williamson) the Horses.

All the rider and age group series classes take place on Saturday, with six combinations taking on the FMG Young Rider class. Steffi Whittaker doubles her chances with both Eros K and On The Point Eve entered.

The Hinterland Amateur Rider has fielded twenty starters including Jayne Beattie, Margaret Ridley, Kate Perry and Jess Land who are all currently sitting in the top 10 on the Nationals series leaderboard. They will all be looking to improve their positions with the extra points on offer which only happens for the Amateur Series at Island Championships, Nationals and Horse of the Year. The Dunstan Horsefeeds and Equifibre Pro-Am also offers extra points and has 16 entries.

In the Dunstan Horsefeeds and Equifibre Junior Rider Sophie Townsend and Kingslea Kiwi will be looking to record their ninth Junior win of the season. They will have strong competition from thirteen other riders including Tayler Nalder and Icebreaker II who have won their last two Junior Riders starts.

There are five entries in the Matthews Hanoverians Seven Year Old Breeding Series including local SCNO rider Kate Cavanagh and Wallflower who have already won two seven year old starts this season.

The Mitavite Speedi-Beet Six Year Old Series will see nine combinations start including Tegan Fitzsimon and Campari. Tegan arrived back in the South Island this week after a very successful North Island campaign that saw Christchurch based Tegan win the New Zealand World Cup Series.

Rose Alfeld and Eye Catcher NZPH will be the ones to watch in the East Coast Performance Horses Five Year Old breeding series after they won the Five Year Old Championship at the NZ Young Horse Show in Hastings last month.

The highlight of the show will be the Mainland Coachwork Premier League Class scheduled to run at 1pm on Sunday. All three combinations entered have experience at Premier League level (140-160cm) and it is hard to choose a frontrunner out of Steffi Whittaker on Eros K, Nicole White on LC Samson and Chris Harris on Glenbrooke Archie Bunker.

The Country TV Pony Grand Prix will see six ponies start including Ella Wylie and MF Spot Me who won the first Premier Pony Grand Prix of the South Island season at McLeans Island last month.

The South Canterbury Saddlery Horse and The Barber Well Drilling Pony Speed South Island Titles promise to be exciting classes to watch and both take place from 8:30am on Sunday morning.

Local FEI Level 3 course designer Roger Laplanche is designing in the South Canterbury Saddlery Ring 1. FEI Level 1 designer Sarah Ching is flying down from Nelson to design Ring Two and Donella Still (FEI Level 2) is in charge of The Mainland Coachwork Ring 3. Competition starts at 8:30am both days and entry is free. Food and coffee is available to purchase at the show from Friday evening onwards.